


scintilla

by Hope



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-22
Updated: 2005-10-22
Packaged: 2017-10-03 10:35:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2002/10/23.html"><b>scintilla</b></a> \sin-TIL-uh\, <i>noun</i>:<br/>A tiny or scarcely detectable amount; the slightest particle; a trace; a spark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	scintilla

He grew up knowing that there were a reason for everything, even if that reason weren't for him to know. His faith and his home resided close to one another in his heart and there weren't no one in the verse gonna come rip it away from him without killing him first, and maybe not even then.  Mal feels sometimes that he ain't ever gonna die, he can't die, and part of it's because Zoe's always got his back but mostly it's that thing in his heart, his heart and his head and swelling outta his chest and there ain't no way this thing is stopping no how, not for anything or anyone.

And then there's just Zoe, and a gaping emptiness that makes him wonder if he's been blow apart after all, though why he ain't dead is a question he himself don't know the answer to any more, the fact that he's alive seeming one of the biggest things to go wrong since the beginning of this whole debacle.  He thinks of home but it ain't no comfort anymore, thinks of his Ma running her hand through the oats for the cattle with winter's breath coming out her mouth, thinks of the taste of molasses mixed with the chaff scent in his nostrils, and the stickiness turns to blood and steam to smoke, and it's all ruins.

The ship ain't so much a home at first as a shell of armor to protect him from the black that'd turn him into nothing 'fore he could even have a thought about it.  Protect him and get him closer to it; letting him live outside of anything else that might get an agenda in its head to use Mal as a pawn in its own plan, one that ain't got no care for nothing but itself.  Zoe tells him she grew up on a ship, and then she don't say much at all for a long time after that.  Just Zoe, then, and Serenity.

**Author's Note:**

> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/36901.html


End file.
